Sunday, March 29, 2009

Sunday, March 22, 2009

It's getting down to the ticker. I have 26 days until my mémoire needs to be finished and I need to be packing my bags for a 750 km bike ride towards Venice.

The pressure is mounting, but I know I can do it. At this point, I can't even think in "can" or "try".... there is only do or do not. :-)

The mémoire is a pickle. On one hand, I'm really interested in my subject; it's what I want to do with my next chapter of my life. But on the other hand, it just seems like this unattainable thing that gets farther away from me with every step I take closer toward it. It's an odd feeling this treadmill effect, where I feel that even as hard as I try I don't get anywhere at all.

I have half of my interviews done, practically 20 pages written, but I can't shake this feeling of being farther away from my goal.

Monday, March 16, 2009

I'm starting a new elective entitled "Global Leadership", that most likely is going to be pretty boring, but we shall see. It's the first day in like 2 hours so I need to keep an open mind. I am obligated to take it by Northeastern's rules, but who knows maybe I will be surprised.

The series finale of the best television show around is happening on Friday. I'm going to miss watching Battlestar Galactica on Saturday mornings and I am glad I have a bunch of the seasons with me. If you haven't watched it yet, do it. It's worth everything hour. It is a tad on the nerdy side, but honestly the story is what gets me. It's powered by emotion and a celebration of people in hard times and it brings forth a lot of subjects like religion, redemption, and keeping order in a time of crisis. I could go on and on about how amazing it is, and it's really true.

I've made a lot of progress of my mémoire! Had two interviews and so things are going well.

Been applying to jobs and programs left and right - we'll see how everything pans out. Keep your thumbs crossed for me.

Went on a 30 kilometer bike ride on Sunday, our destination was a farm where you can pick your own veg. The daily pick was leeks and spinach - we passed on that. But we sat and ate peanut butter sandwiches (we packed) and drank fresh apple juice from the farm. It was a great morning.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

I was writing a bit of my mémoire today and I was focusing on how the Internet changes the way we view information. Through the internet, we have access to an infinite amount of knowledge, and it's amazing to think of how much information we touch everyday just by signing into Facebook and looking at people's links, reading blogs or browsing on Google News.

I was reading Anil Dash's blog and saw that he wrote a post on "vision" and how it should be essential in reviewing how people run their businesses. As a marketing student getting ready to go out in the world, I couldn't help but be a little inspired by what he had to say. Here's a quote :

"And the truth is, Amazon, Google and Apple all make billions of dollars — that doesn't happen by accident. They shouldhave clear goals about how to make money as part of their efforts. Butsince all of these companies also traffic in commerce derived from theartistic and expressive works that shape our culture, it makes sensefor us to evaluate their efforts based on how well they articulate adesire to give back to our culture. They should makesomething meaningful for the world while making their money, at leastas a happy byproduct if not as an intentional output. It's a lot easierfor me to believe that employees at Amazon are doing something that'smeaningful to the world at large than to feel that way about Apple'ssimilar efforts."

And it's true, we need companies out there that have a vision of what they want to do in the world. I want to work for a company that has a vision of something bigger than only making money, and while I don't see anything wrong with focusing on profitability, I find that it is more important to me to feel like I am participating in something bigger.

At Six Apart, I would get excited about the fact that people were able to publish their thoughts, passions and ideas on our blogging platforms. At Firstgiving, I couldn't help but be inspired by the millions of people raising money to cure cancer, supply hospital programs, and help others just for the sake of helping others. These are two companies that really make it easy for people to do things that they might not have had the technical prowess to do themselves, and not only are they helping them doi it, but they are helping them do it more efficiently. At the end of the day, Firstgiving and Six Apart can say that they were a part of something bigger just by making it easier for people to do what they do. I can't deny it, but that sounds pretty visionary to me. :-)

Anil ends his post like this:

And just as importantly, we can use this criteria of vision, ofresponsibility for culture, as a way of analyzing announcements andreleases in the technology world. So, last night, Amazon released theirKindle software for Apple's iPhone. Most of the reviews understandablyfocused on the readability of the text, or how well the synchronizationfeatures work. But I'm hoping that at least one or two lines of futurereviews will spare a moment to think "is it a good thing for the worldif this thing takes off?" My sense is that we're more likely to getpositive answers to that question if the teams that are making theseproducts are led by an appropriately ambitious vision.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

TED.com is currently one of my most favorite websites to visit. I love searching the archives and seeing what some of the innovative minds of our day have had to say. The site is full of videos with authors, scientists, programmers and entrepreneurs all on various subjects. One I really like was by Elizabeth Gilbert on Nurturing Creativity and then there is another done by J.J. Abrams the creator of amazing television series like LOST.

The site is overall well organized, well stocked and a veritable online feasting ground for inspiration.

This morning, I was perusing my google reader and they had a TED video featuring Evan Williams of Twitter. I couldn't help myself, but take this little distraction and hear what he had to say. I was not disappointed. My favorite part of the discussion is at the end, when they pull up a Twitter search to see what the audience had been twittering about Evan Williams while he was talking the results being both funny and interesting. How amazing it is that today we can post our opinions in less that 140 characters and in like than 5 seconds. Amazing, right?

As you can tell Frankenhoodie and I are Twitter fans, and twittering is a fun way to pass one-liners between ourselves and also among our friends.